About Me

Wednesday, June 29, 2011

I suppose it's time to continue blogging about my adventures. :) It makes me quite happy....

Alrighty, last wednesday I arrived in Bogota, Columbia to work with GO InterNational partner Guillermo Parra and his family. Incredible family... but more about them later. I met this wonderful old lady on the plane and over the course of a three hour conversation that made me break out my quite rusty Spanish brain, I learned that she was a Christian. She invited me to her church in Bogotá but we'll have to see if i'll be able to see her again. The airport was fun. Talk about being worried, my bag was the last one to come off the plane. :S I found Adrienne outside with Paola and we went to what will lovingly be called 'home' for the next ten weeks.

The South American air is great! The Spanish is wonderful. The people are incredible. I love it here. I arrived in the middle of vacation from school so i haven't settled into a routine yet, but I've been helping Adrienne with English classes and doing any number of odd jobs and translation stuff so i've kept busy.

On Saturday we held an event in el parque de joyas near one of the projects. (Pastor Guillermo and his family work at and administer 4 different projects that offer food and classes to kids) This outreach was my first cherished Colombian experience, a very new experience for me: bodyguards. Fernando, a really great guy who i met the day before, accompanied me when we went out to invite people to the event. When we got back to the park, he had to go off to the side because he was helping with security. I didn't want to miss everything so i chilled in the crowd. :) and everything was good.

Half way through, Carlos came to find me to take pictures. So i followed him across the stage and started snapping pictures (with an almost dead camara :S) it was bad. It's also not a great idea to show off camaras so it was interesting. Anyway, this dude kept following me. In the middle of drug territory and far from Fernando and Carlos who had wandered off too, i was slightly worried. So i decided to test the situation and i walked to the other side of the crowd to "get a different angle for pictures". he followed. Another five steps to the right... (working my way toward Fernando) and he followed, conveniently stopping when i did. I couldn't handle it and me in my "he wouldn't hurt me" attitude, i confronted him. :) Apparently they told him to watch out for me... jaja. I appreciated it, i really did. It would have been nice if I had met him before but hey... having strangers watch out for you turned out to not be too bad. His name was Daniel, plays the drums in the church. Cool guy.... once i got to know him and knew he wasn't a creeper.

Yesterday I went with Paola to her university and got to know downtown Bogota. Fun! And very very different from Lima. I find myself comparing everything to Lima and even though the two countries share a border, it's amazing how distinct they are. I'm off to an English class, but i'll do my best to get some pictures up soon and tell you more about my family here. Blessings....